Hello peeps! It’s been a looong time since I sat like this on a Sunday afternoon in a cozy corner of my couch to pen down my thoughts. When I think about the last couple of months, all I remember is spending almost every single weekend outdoors – doing hikes or meeting people or traveling to new places and I feel so grateful that I was able to do what I love doing. But at the same time, a few weekends back I realized that I needed a break from all this. I needed to stay at home for sometime, make matcha and take care of more mundane but unavoidable chores like deep cleaning the house and doing shit loads of laundry. I love doing these things on a regular basis too, just that somehow it got stuck in my head that summers are meant for “being outside” and “doing things” and these got pushed away.
On those lines, last weekend, I decided to swap out my summer clothes/shoes for my Fall/Winter ones and took on that project with a lot of excitement. It did take me the entire weekend, but it was so worth the effort. In this process, I slowly realized how much my tastes in clothes have changed, how much my style has evolved in this last one year. In the beginning of this year, I came across this book – The curated closet by Anuschka Rees and got it off of amazon. I read it religiously, day and night and at the end of the book, I felt like I had completely discovered my personal style and was ready to take on the world! Well, the reality was far from it (you guessed it right), BUT it helped me understand my style and be a more conscious shopper in SO MANY WAYS. This book talks about selecting the right prints, kind of garments, knowing you color palette and so many things that sound like high fashion jargon but is so helpful in discovering what you really want from your wardrobe.
I’ve always been a person who enjoys dressing up, be it to work or outside of work. Somehow, looking and feeling good in my clothes instantly brightens my mood every morning in ways my green tea can’t (:D). So at the end of two wardrobe swaps this year (one in April and one in Oct) and all that I learnt from this book, I thought I would write down some tips on how I embraced slow fashion in all its different forms.
- Declutter your wardrobe
This is one thing I’m so glad I did this year, because it made me realize how important it is to only have the clothes you use/need on a regular basis hanging in your closet. It saves me a ton of time every morning when I look for what to wear. This process of decluttering is significantly time consuming but totally worth it. Set aside a day in a weekend and try on everything that’s hanging in your closet to check if it fits your size and style and donate/sell the rest of them. The goal is to fine tune your wardrobe so much that if you were to randomly choose a piece of clothing every day from your closet, you should be able to wear it anywhere without second thoughts!
2. Group your clothes according to color
When I read about this in Anuschka’s book, I thought it was such a trivial thing and didn’t really expect anything to come out of it. But I was pleasantly surprised by how easily I put together outfits every morning once I had them grouped according to color, starting from the lightest to the darkest! All you have to do is decide what bottom you want to wear and look at the color groups that go with your bottom to spin out a quick and chic outfit!
3. Make very specific shopping lists before you go shopping
If you were to try one thing out of all my tips, I would recommend trying this. I used to be this person who aimlessly wandered around in a mall and picked stuff from random shops as and when I liked them. As fate would have it, it always ended up looking bad on me the moment I tried them on at home. That or I wouldn’t really find accessories/clothes that go with them so I would not use it. So this year, after each of my wardrobe swaps, I spent some time analyzing my wardrobe and figuring out what I needed. Then, I wrote detailed shopping lists with what I thought would be a good addition/what I needed to fill in the gaps in my wardrobe. Eg. Lavender fitted button down shirt or red and black wrap plaid skirt. Then, I would shop specifically for them. I was surprised to find how much time and energy and money I ended up saving in this process!
4. Figure out your favorite colors and styles and shop accordingly
This and creating detailed shopping lists kinda go hand in hand. I had collected a lot of printed tops and bottoms over the years. I recently realized that I don’t like big gaudy prints. And that I don’t really like printed pants. How did I figure this out? Because at the end of a season, when I looked at all the clothes I had worn regularly, these were always untouched. I then donated all of them. And I made a mental note to never buy these kind of prints again.
5. Don’t shop online unless you are sure of your size
What a shocker 😀 I realized the hard way that shopping online isn’t really good for you nor the environment. Unless you know your size in that brand, I highly recommend not doing this blunder. It’s a vicious cycle – You order something online – You try it on and realize that it doesn’t fit that well/it’s a slightly different color from what you expected (Basically you’re not 100% happy with the purchase) – You think of returning it – You look at the return shipping cost and realize it’s too much of a hassle and convince yourself you’ll somehow make do with this – You hang it in your closet or wear it once, and that garment never sees the light of the day again. I’ve been there and done that multiple times and it sucks! So this year I took the trouble of actually going all the way to San Francisco to try on stuff from ethical brands in the store before blindly ordering it online (Now you know what I’ve been doing all these weekends :P) Anyways, I hope you get the point.
Ok so that was a long one. I hope you made it till this and if you have – YOU’RE AWESOME! I hope you take at least one or two of these tips back with you and incorporate them. Trust me, you and your wallet will be tenfold happier once you’ve figured out your style 🙂 The pictures of SB were taken at Lake Tahoe earlier this summer and her gorgeous hi-lo maxi is from Lifestyle India.
Thanks for stopping by and see you soon ❤
Until next time,
Mal
Trendy Travel Tales 